


Sublimity

by lordy_lou



Series: Interim [4]
Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: F/M, artagan's a freak and all of us know it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-28
Updated: 2018-07-28
Packaged: 2019-06-17 14:00:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,610
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15462966
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lordy_lou/pseuds/lordy_lou
Summary: There are two Scanlans on the ground.  They are spooning.  One of them is naked.She has seen stranger things, Pike thinks. But this? This is up there. The Scanlans are holding tightly to each other in the soft grass, and both give out little snores and sniffs simultaneously as they sleep.Pike tilts her head, and she can see… parts.This is really up there.(Today, they will fight a god.)





	Sublimity

 

_all kinds of sadness i’ve left behind me;_

_many’s the day when i have done wrong._

 

* * *

 

There are two Scanlans on the ground.They are spooning.One of them is naked.

She has seen stranger things, Pike thinks. But this? This is up there. The Scanlans are holding tightly to each other in the soft grass, and both give out little snores and sniffs simultaneously as they sleep. 

Pike tilts her head, and she can see… parts.

This is _up there._

Artagan is standing beside her, his head similarly cocked. _No._ His head is similarly _tilted._

“That’s quite a spell your friend used,” he says.“ _Mas_ Scanlan, indeed.”

Pike swallows, because her mouth is suddenly very dry.She turns her thoughts elsewhere. 

Today, they will fight a god.

 

—

 

By the time Vax returns from his disturbingly sexual strangulation and consequent death, Pike has been resisting the call to sleep for a few hours.She is wavering against Grog’s massive legs, and some of the taller members of the group have shot worried glances in her direction.

Despite this, no one tells her to sleep, and she does not volunteer to.They keep a quiet vigil, and they wait for the soft steps of Vax from the forest.

(She had tried to watch his death, tried to make sure that Artagan didn’t do anything weirder than the already _extremely_ weird thing he’d asked, tried to make eye contact with Scanlan and Grog and Stringbean, tried to let them silently know she’d be there to keep their backs—but then Percy had pulled her away from the water’s edge, and she’d turned to him with a scowl.

 _I want to see this_ , she’d thought. _I’ve seen so many of you back from death, so what is it that makes you think I can’t do the reverse?_ _I’m not some innocent._ But then she’d looked and seen the too-tight eyes from Vex and Keyleth, the desperate distraction of treading water and inane chatter, and she sighed, and the scowl had twisted off of her face with some effort, and she’d set herself to trying to fix her friends.)

(Again.)

Nearby, Scanlan is idly plucking out a tune on some kind of stringed instrument.Whatever the song is, it’s unfinished, and she listens as he plays a few bars on continual repeat with only minute changes.Artagan doesn’t speak, but whistles faintly along with Scanlan’s playing, offering small suggestions on the composition that only work about half of the time.

(Scanlan alone had been away from the group.He’d disappeared into the forest for a while with Vax’s armor.After an hour, as they sat by the edge of Nala’s spring while their clothes dried, Vex had murmured into the stillness, “Scanlan should be back by now, yes?” 

Pike and Grog had looked at each other.Then, patting her best friend’s shoulder and telling him to stay put, Pike walked into the woods in the direction Scanlan had gone.It was a short walk—ten minutes or so—to where she found him carefully setting stones in a circle around Vax’s armor.The feathers had all been carefully swept in one direction, and sprigs of scavenged flowers lay in the buttonholes.He had been singing something under his breath, snatches of words in Gnomish just escaping her.

“Scanlan,” she’d said.He looked up at her, brown eyes wide, but—ah, there was the hint of a smile on his face.

“Just wanted to give Vax something special to come back to,” he said to her unspoken question.“Not every day your friend comes back from the dead.”Then he stopped and frowned.“Comes back to being dead.”He shook his head.“Comes back to existence from a more permanent death, but only for a limited time.”

Well.When he’d put it like that, Pike thought, it made absolutely no sense, and something in her chest had spilled with warmth like a spell gone perfectly at the sight of this nervous gnome still wired with fear that a god wouldn’t follow through on a promise.He was new to this faith thing.

“Scanlan,” she’d said. “He’ll love it.”Then she’d extended her hand towards him—bare of gloves or gauntlets, and she’d wanted the comfort of their palms pressed together—and waggled her fingers.“Come back to the group?”

He’d set down the final rock, completing the circle, and padded through the grass to stand at her side.Then he’d taken her hand and laced their fingers together with infinite care, studying her face the entire time, that small smile growing just a bit.

“Let’s go,” he’d said, and they set off together back towards the campsite.Their walk was silent save for Scanlan’s perpetual humming and the quiet rasp of grass against their legs, and Pike could barely focus on the direction because of the slow, tender circles Scanlan was rubbing into the back of her hand with his thumb, following the rhythm of his song.

So, of course, she’d started doing the same to him, and she watched with supreme satisfaction as he nearly ran into a tree as her thumb tapped across his veins, as two of her fingers curled into his callused palm and started to scratch lightly along the lines.When he’d turned to look at her with an eyebrow raised, she’d smiled beatifically and he’d stifled a chuckle and muttered something about holy women.

At the tree line, they’d paused.Then, quickly, they’d untangled their hands and stepped apart.)

Now—in the moment, when Stringbean steps into the clearing, Scanlan looks at her, bright and relieved and his playing comes to an immediate stop, and they both stand at once to greet their friend, who is naked and confused and glad to be back.Vex and Keyleth rush past them both, and the gnomes step aside to let them through.

There are jokes about nudity, about armor, about Scanlan’s “all-knowing” powers thanks to Ioun, and before long they are all settling in for the night, relief quickly bleeding into exhaustion. 

Tomorrow, they will fight a god.

Pike pats out a bed in the grass, near Grog, and watches Scanlan from the corner of her vision.He’s not settling down for the night.Instead, he is speaking with Artagan, a coy and wicked smile on his face, and if she can’t technically hear the wheedling tone of his voice then she can certainly _imagine_ it.Then Artagan laughs, snaps his fingers, and there is suddenly snow heaped against the nearby trees. 

Scanlan sketches a bow towards the Archfey, and begins…

…to build…

…a snowgnome?

It takes a bit, and the tall folk have largely dropped off to sleep in their normal pairs, and Grog is laying near the pool and waggling his fingers in the water, but Pike sits in the soft grass and watches as Scanlan slowly, but surely, makes a life-size snowgnome.

Then he spits on the damn thing—it’s exactly his height, too, which is weird—and at this point, Pike is too curious to _not_ go to him.So she walks through the grass, her armor shining on the ground in the dusk, and he settles on the soft earth with his back to the group.

He is singing quietly in both Gnomish and Common, and she catches some of the words in the lilting, folksy tune he’d been practicing earlier— _I wish, I wish, I need more than what I am now, I always have needed more, I wish, I wish—_ and there is a faint purple glow around both him and that strange, strange snowgnome.

Pike knows something about magic.She knows about the weave of reality in the most abstract of terms.Her magic comes from divinity, from Sarenrae’s love through her, like an outside hand reaching into the weave in order to embroider, to fold, to hem, to alter through outside action when called with belief.Allura’s magic, by contrast, is her own, built on an innate understanding of this weave: instead of changing the fabric from outside-in, she cuts through it with her own intellect, dragging the threads by force and knowledge.

Scanlan’s magic is different.His magic, she knows, is the same sort of magic found in those singular moments of a performance—those moments of swollen feeling suddenly shunted by the sheer weight of existence, when everything swells to a head and the heart is lifted beyond itself into something greater.

It is the moment of sublimity, tender and fearsome all at once. 

It is in those moments, she thinks, that reality’s weave bends its threads to fit his suggestions. 

So she watches, silently, as Scanlan sings with his eyes closed and wishes, and _Wishes._ She looks to Artagan, who has raised both eyebrows at the sight and sound of this small gnome as he coaxes reality to change for him.

Softly, gently, she pats out a new bed in the grass behind Scanlan.He’ll want it when he’s finished.Then she gives him a kiss on the crown of his head, light enough to not startle him, and in Gnomish, whispers into his hair:

“Wake me up when you’re done.”

He sings a _thank you_ and an _I will_ into his song, and she presses another kiss to his head because in the end, she cannot help herself.

Pike wanders off to bed, and the grass is warm and inviting, and the dusky sky above her has faint traces of stars.

 

—

 

The stars have been covered over by clouds when something shakes her shoulder, and Pike immediately curls herself into a fighting position, grasping at her chest for her holy symbol.Before she can cast anything, before she gets beyond a quick _Oh Sarenrae, hear me—_ she’s greeted with a soft “ _Oi_ , Pike.”

Instinctively, she relaxes, and her vision focuses.Scanlan is crouched by her side, hand on her shoulder, and he looks so very tired.“I’m done,” he says.“You wanna meet him?”

The rest of the party is still asleep—well, maybe not Vex, given the way Pike sees her friend’s ears twitch at Scanlan’s voice—and Artagan is lounging in one of his twisted-tree chairs (was that a _settee?_ Goodness gracious) and inspecting his nails with judicious boredom.Scanlan pulls his hand away from her, and instead waggles his fingers towards her.“Come on,” he says.An attempt at a grin cracks over his face, and something in her heart breaks—she is only now becoming awake, and he is even too tired to fake joy. 

Today, they will fight a god.

She reaches up and takes his hand, curling her fingers tight around his.He guides her silently past a sleeping Grog, skirts Team Half-Elf and a Human (Vex raises her head and watches their passage with dark eyes, and there is a sad smile on her face, and she says nothing), to where Pike had patted a bed into the grass last night. 

There is another Scanlan laying on the ground, identical down to the curl of hair past his shoulders, and he is completely, absolutely naked. 

There’s been a lot of nakedness recently, now that Pike thinks about it. 

“Oi,” says this naked Scanlan, and Pike tightens her grip on her Scanlan.Both of them notice, and the naked one gives her a little smile.“You know, Pikey,” he says, “I’ve had this dream before.You, me, _me_ , the great outdoors…”

Her Scanlan sighs.“I think I made him wrong,” he says to her.

Pike shakes her head.“You made him exactly right,” she responds.She still hasn’t let go of his hand.“You’re just tired and—well, you know, Scanlan, sometimes it’s hard to put up with your bullshit when you’re exhausted.”She bumps his shoulder with hers.

Naked Scanlan laughs.Her Scanlan—her Scanlan?Oh dear.—slumps against her, and his voice is husky from singing, low and fried.“This is what you’ve put up with all these years?” he murmurs.“Now I understand.”

“Do you?” both Naked Scanlan and Pike ask at once.They look at each other, a wicked grin on each of their faces, and Pike feels bright and mischievous for a moment.

Her Scanlan pauses.Then he looks at both of them, at his simulacrum and at Pike, and his gaze is heavy.“I am pretty hot,” he says.“And that _is_ a dream I’ve had.”He shakes his head.“Can’t change the spots on a werecat.” 

Then, slowly, her Scanlan sinks to the grassy earth, and Pike panics for a moment before she realizes that no, he’s not dying, he’s just tired.“Spoon with me?” he says into the grass, and both Naked Scanlan—she can’t think of him in any other way—and Pike glance at each other. 

“Just a second,” Naked Scanlan responds, and her Scanlan groans into the ground, his hand leaving hers in exhaustion.“There’s something I need to do.” 

Then, Naked Scanlan steps over his creator’s body, grabs Pike by the waist, and bends up to meet her in a delightfully hard kiss.He’s beaming against her mouth, and she squeaks as he pulls her closer to him, pressing against her with all his wiry strength.

All of him presses against her.

Oh dear.

Well.

She hears a shift of movement nearby, and she cracks an eye open, and her Scanlan is watching them both, his eyes wide and—gods, he’s got hope and tragedy written across his face, and he’s too tired to hide it when their eyes meet, but there’s guilt there too, like he’s sorry for having these thoughts about her.

She remembers apologies, and while she thinks she may love the newer, quieter side he’s shown since he’s come back, she also loves the Scanlan who is bold and absurd, who shits on beds and laughs it off, who proposes in a panic, who sings at monsters and tames them, who commissions portraits of the two of them, who tells the most unbelievable lies and makes them true with just a smile.

Pike closes her eyes and returns the kiss, and she hears two soft sighs as she threads her fingers into Naked Scanlan’s hair, and her smile meets his and there is laughter and joy between their lips.Then, she pulls his hair, and Naked Scanlan winces away from her.

“You need sleep,” she says to her Scanlan.Then she points at Naked Scanlan.“I’m going to go get people awake.You two should sleep.” 

Naked Scanlan nods, his face suddenly serious.He kisses her on the cheek before his hands leave her waist entirely, and whispers his thanks to her, and she feels oddly accomplished as he slips onto the grass and curls up beside her Scanlan.Her heart seems to lift beyond itself for a moment, and she offers a prayer to Sarenrae, asks for protection for the both of them, and she feels tender and buoyed and she knows now that if she dies today, she will have one less regret.

She feels the soft touch of Sarenrae within her soul, and she knows the path of forgiveness and walks it.

“Good night,” she says, and earns a double thumbs up from her Scanlans.Then she turns to the rest of Vox Machina and begins her task.By the time everyone else is awake, both Scanlans are fast asleep and she and Artagan have returned watch to their simultaneous movements, fascinated in the gloaming.

Today, they will fight a god. 

Somehow, now, it doesn’t seem impossible.

 

* * *

 

_so come on!_

_i am the whistler:_

_i have a fife, and a drum to play._

 

**Author's Note:**

> "The passion caused by the great and sublime in nature . . . is Astonishment; and astonishment is that state of the soul, in which all its motions are suspended, with some degree of horror. In this case the mind is so entirely filled with its object, that it cannot entertain any other." [Edmund Burke, On the Sublime , 1756 ed. J. T. Bolton. 58]
> 
> and then bards just fuckin weaponize it i guess 
> 
> interim text from "the whistler" by jethro tull


End file.
